new old track

[aoVI]

finished remixing / remastering more from 1989/1990 cassette 4 tracks. I like how this one turned out.

https://soundcloud.com/ontol/it-spans-the-gulf-between-us






whole album for free download here:

https://ontol.bandcamp.com/album/cassettera

[Spicygod]

Nice spacious and calm

[synkrotron]

Apologies for not getting to this sooner... I am spreading myself a bit thin, trying to listen to stuff here and over at the Cakewalk forum, and trying to get creative myself, as well as spending far too much time keeping the SoundCloud machine turning...

I'm enjoying the dreamy nature of this (synth, guitar and bass guitar, from what I can hear) piece... Was it recorded live and straight to tape by the three of you? Or was it layered a track at a time?


cheers

andy

[aoVI]

I don't even remember the original session of this particular piece. I have several boxes full of hundreds of cassette 4 tracks, and things were hazy over the years (and were even during the sessions :biggrin. We'd fill up a tape, mix it down, slap a title on it and call it an album.

But in listening to the original tapes, I'd say it it was layered, bounced, layered again, sat in a hot car for a year, then put in a box where it traveled with me for the last quarter century. The hot car and box are part of a patented process, so PM me before trying this to obtain the proper clearances.;)

I have been giving each tape a listen, and man did I ever waste tape with noodling, things that went no where, and stuff that was just downright awful... Badly recorded usually, as my skills were still young.

If I find a piece that has enough merit, it gets brought into StudioOne where it gets edits, processes, and repairs. Some of the reverb and delay was added at this stage as well.

I appreciate the listens, and no worries on not getting to it sooner. My work won't be appreciated until 2119 when a music historian going over the early days of music on the internet discovers the files on an old bandcamp server in the basement of an abandoned building. I become the Van Gogh of late 20th and early 21st century ambient. Eventually I team up with a guy named Ted Logan and our music becomes a thing that brings about world peace. Excellent.

[GaryG]

I'm really liking the whole Cassettera album. It obviously has that 'cassette' sound but that's fine with me, sounds warm and well integrated (I probably bought too many lofi noise cassettes in the early 90s... ) I think the guitar bits make me think of early Labradford though you beat them by a few years I reckon. Yeah, great stuff.

[quiethorn]

Some of us spend time looking for the right tape simulator, but you a better solution: record to tape and wait 25 years!

Is the compression due to saturation on the original tape or did you apply that? I'm actually working on how to get that sound into some of my stuff with some plugins (FerricTDS probably).

[S1gnsOfL1fe]

This old stuff of yours is so quality. I mean seriously dude, should I just start calling you Bill Roach?

If the shoe fits... :D

[aoVI]

Thank you for all the good words and the smile I am wearing.

While these are original recordings made in the late 80's, early 90's--I must stress they are being reworked and reprocessed liberally.

The benefit of 25 years more of messing about, eventually getting a degree in recording engineering, and experiencing the trends in music and recording over a generation do separate these from what they were in original form. While I still don't think I am yet where I'd like to be, back then I really was a bit of a blind hog occasionally finding an acorn. We weren't doing anything anymore prophetic of future sounds to come than any other bunch of really-high-younger-people-interested-in-making-strange-sounds were doing at the time. I do think it illustrates that I am much better at interpreting other's work and producing other musicians than I am composing on my own.

Most of the compression should be from the original tape. The signal was usually printed pretty hot. I always bought the best metal tapes i could find locally (most are the Maxell XLII series and other high-bias). Most of the things I compose currently get tape/console emulations and other noise-floor devices added but these already had most of the hiss they needed. :D These pieces did get a helping hand from a variety of modern EQs, delays, and reverbs, but I cannot recall using any dynamics control other than eq.

While my ears are old, the tape emulations I found that have made me at least think I was getting what I wanted were Waves' Abbey Road J37, Kramer Master Tape, Slate VTM, and Nomad Factory's Magnetic II. But I am focusing more on the blurring that happens with a noise floor than them as compression. So much work to add the noise we spent decades trying to remove.:p

I will readily admit to enjoying watching the tape reels spin on the J37 while rendering the final mix. I do close the tape reel visualization on VTM as they are fast and distracting. I never spent a ton of time in professional studios, but just enough to miss the smell of the electronics, the sound of a 2" machine rewinding, and watching tape smoothly and slowly feed from one reel to the other.